Second Draft CWG-IANA Stewardship Proposal Out for Public Comment — April 24th Explanatory Webinar Scheduled

Late on the evening on April 22nd the CWG-Stewardship on the IANA Naming Functions issued its second Draft Proposal for a 28-day public comment period that closes on May 20th. Information about the Proposal can be found in a news announcement and at the public comment page.

ICANN has scheduleda 90-minute explanatory webinaron the proposal on Friday, April 24th at 6:00 and 14:00 UTC. Individuals who wish to participate should refer to the Webinar announcement for registration instructions.

ICA is concerned that the 28-day comment period, cut by thirty percent from the standard 40-day period used for other ICANN matters, may be insufficient to address a document of this importance and length. That is particularly true because several sections of the 90-page draft are marked as “Under Development” or “Draft and Under Development” indicating that this remains an incomplete work in progress.

Indeed, the explanation provided by the CWG notes that, “During the Public Comment period, the CWG-Stewardship will continue to assess the implications of the proposed post-transition structure (section IV) and the fulfillment of NTIA requirements (section V). These sections depended largely on the completion of Section III and therefore are in outline form only at this time.” (Emphasis added)

The referenced Section III of the Proposal is the very important “PROPOSED POST-TRANSITION OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY”. In this regard the CWG explains that the critical details will be based on the unfinished work of the separate CCWG-Accountability:

DEPENDENCIES ON THE CCWG-ACCOUNTABILITY

The CWG-Stewardship’s proposal has dependencies on and is expressly conditioned upon the CCWG-Accountability process. Specifically, the proposal requires ICANN accountability in the following respects:

Ability for the community to have more rights regarding the development and consideration of the ICANN budget;

Empowering the multistakeholder community to have certain rights with respect to the ICANN Board, including the ICANN Board’s oversight of the IANA operations, specifically, the ability to appoint and remove members of the ICANN Board, and to recall the entire Board;

The IANA Function Review, created to conduct periodic and special reviews of the IANA Functions, should be incorporated into the ICANN bylaws;

The CSC, created to monitor the performance of the IANA Functions and escalate non-remediated issues to the ccNSO and GNSO, should be incorporated into the ICANN bylaws.

Accountability processes that the CCWG-Accountability is enhancing, such as the Independent Review Panel, should be made applicable to IANA Functions and accessible by TLD managers, if they wish to take advantage of these mechanisms.

All of the foregoing mechanisms are to be provided for in the ICANN bylaws as “fundamental bylaws” requiring community ascent in order for amendment.

The CCWG-Accountability is expected to deliver its own draft proposal for a similarly truncated public comment period later this month. However, the CCWG has penciled in a possible second comment period on the Accountability proposal that could begin around July 1 — while the CWG has no plans for a second comment period on the Stewardship proposal even though the draft that was just published has large holes in it.

The CWG’s current plan going forward is to analyze the comments following the close of the input period and then deliver a final draft for review, consideration and approval by ICANN Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees around June 8th, with submission to the IANA Coordination Group (ICG) scheduled for just seventeen days later on June 25th.

At some future point the final package assembled by the ICG will have to be reconciled and combined with the final Accountability proposal and delivered to the ICANN Board for review and approval, an event currently projected to occur around August 30th. After that, implementation of those accountability measures required to be in place prior to the IANA transition would start, and the NTIA would review the full package and decide whether it effectively met the principles contained in its March 2014 announcement of the IANA transition.

Congressional appropriations language remains in effect that prohibits the NTIA from facilitating the transition prior to September 30th and requires that it provide Congress with 45 days advance notice of any intent to transfer oversight of the IANA root zone functions.